This invention relates to apparatus for decontaminating sand. It relates more particularly to a mobile machine for cleansing oil from beach sand.
As a result of the installation of off-shore oil rigs and the incidence of collisions between, and leaks in, oil-laden ships at sea, the pollution of beaches by oil spillage carried up on the beach by wind and waves has become a real problem. Liquid petroleum products adhere to the sand particles and cause the particles to agglomerate into sticky, oily clumps and globs which are a nuisance to bathers and a health hazard to bird and marine life.
The characteristics of the oil-laden sand depend not only upon the amount of the spillage involved, but also the type of spillage. Sand particles contaminated by very heavy oil such as Bunker C are joined together as relatively dense, hard slabs or clumps while sand exposed to gasoline or light machine oil may be less agglomerated but more slippery or oily to the touch.
Heretofore the only effective and relatively economical way to alleviate the problem of such beach contamination is the physical removal of the contaminated sand. While this solution is satisfactory in situations where spillage is slight and the sand plentiful, it is not practical in cases of massive spillage or where sand is less plentiful because of wind and water errosion and other geographical considerations.